Battle of Gazza

The battle of Gazza was fought in 1186 between the crusader army of King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and the Saracen army of Crown Prince al-Adil of Egypt. The Jerusalemite army charged uphill and routed the inferior Egyptian army, and al-Adil was wounded in the ensuing battle.

Battle
In 1176, Egyptian great imam Batrawi called for a jihad against the Kingdom of Jerusalem, leading to Saladin of the Ayyubid Caliphate dispatching large armies to conquer Jerusalem and the other important cities of the Near East. However, King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and his vassal Baldwin of Ibelin delivered several victories to the Christian crusader cause, defeating large Ayyubid armies many times. Saladin dispatched his son and heir al-Adil to invade Palestine from the south with an army of 508 troops, and King Baldwin IV himself led an army of 992 troops out of Jerusalem to face the Saracens south of Ascalon (present-day Ashkelon, Israel) at Gazza (an archaic spelling of Gaza). Baldwin taunted the enemy in a speech to his men, saying that they used a woman's strategy of throwing things (arrows) at the crusaders, and he challenged the Egyptian commander (whom he called a "nancy") to tell him that he was "looking at (his) bird", accusing him of being effeminate.

The crusader army was larger than the Egyptian army, and the two armies were deployed on opposite sides of the plains near Gaza. The crusader army charged the Ayyubids, with their squires from the County of Tripoli charging the Muslim infantrymen and the Knights of Jerusalem charging the Muslim archers. The Saracen army was routed by the powerful Jerusalemite attack, and al-Adil was critically wounded in the ensuing slaughter. The battle did not end with the rout of the main Muslim army, however, as a group of desert archers continued to scurry across the field. They fought to the last men as King Baldwin and his cavalry rode them down and slashed them dead.